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Malfunction Costs Couple $11 Million Slot Machine Jackpot
ainandil writes "Engineering mistakes, while frustrating, seldom definitively alter the end user's life. Not so in Cripple Creek, Colorado — MaryAnn and Jim McMahon thought their money troubles were over when they hit an $11 million jackpot at a casino Tuesday. Before paying the jackpot, the Wildwood Casino turned the machine over to the Colorado Gaming Division for inspection. A glitch was found, aha! The Wildwood Casino blamed a slot machine malfunction for the $11 million jackpot. Total actually won by the McMahons? $1,627.82."
in recent history that gambling casinos have used "mechanical problems" to evade honoring their promises?
I wager it will be used again. After all, aren't most winners too poor to afford lawyers to fight the casinos? It's the same problem with corporate abuse of DRM and DMCA lawsl.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
"I saw a billboard for the lottery. It said, "Estimated lottery jackpot 55 million dollars." I did not know that was estimated. That would suck if you won and they said, "Oh, we were off by two zeroes. We estimate that you are angry!""
A woman recently won like 42 million in a jackpot and they refused to pay her saying it was a bug.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/colorado-42-mil-jackpot-winner-jack/story?id=10235836
A quick google shows that this happens all the time, whenever someone wins a large number its always blaimed on a bug, and for some magical reason the winners do not get paid.
The casino's are ripping winners off.
I live in Argentina and about two or three years ago a woman won like 3 million Argentinian Pesos in slot machine. The casino claimed it was a fault of the machine. They went to court and the woman won because it didnt matter if it was a machine error, she did not cheat or anything. So whatever the problem was, it had nothing to do with the woman. She played, she won, she should receive her prize. The real problem was between the casino and the company they bought the slot machine from. So the woman was left out of the equation.
Everythiing visible is empty.
That actually was a mistake.
I read an article a while ago about a guy who uploaded the software of a slot machine to a vmware-like environment. This way, he could revert back to the very same state over and over again. The machine always gave the user the impression that if he had made another decision, he would have won the jackpot. Except for when the user actually made that decision.
So I think any slot machine paying big bucks is either programmed to do so periodically as a way of marketing the casino or otherwise suffering from a serious bug.
.sig: No such file or directory
So presumably everyone who played the machine previously can claim their stakes back...the machine was faulty. You can't have it both ways.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I worked in an arcade repairing machines for 3 years... we bought a few dozen decommissioned slot machines from casinos that I retrofitted to dispense prize tokens as opposed to money.
I can tell you that the machines are absolutely programmed to make you lose even if you hit the buttons at the exact right time to stop the rollers. Basically the operator programs the payout to be a ratio of the money deposited. Our machines were programmed to dispense 2 cents worth of prize tokens for every 25 cents deposited. The machine word operate honestly until the ratio got too far in the user's favor, then it would cheat on the last roller to correct the ratio. a jack pot scenario would only be allowed to happen if the ratio was already deep in the favor of the operator.
It was pretty comical, with the machine open I could stop the rollers right in the position I wanted by hand, and if the machine decided to "correct" the ratio it would use the stepper motor to index the last roller one or two positions past where I had stopped it. Pretty much undetectable to the human eye while the thing is spinning.
Collector's Edition
Exactly, can I demand an inspection every time I don't win?
I've always assumed most games of 'skill' are rigged. Remember those Storm Stopper games that look like a glass dome with the spinning light that you try to catch on the jackpot (you see them at Chuck E. Cheese places)? Every time, I hit it on either side of the jackpot. You'd think that I'd have at least 1/3 chance of getting if if that's the case, but I rarely actually got it. I would think that most games even outside casinos (cranes, stackers, those vertical ones with the red lights) that appear to be be dependent on skill are, once you hit a certain level, mostly luck. They're kinda fun to put a few quarters in, and I get that someone has to make money, but still, rigging is rigging.
The industry works very hard to find out, as it turns out. Every slot machine ships with what's called a PAR sheet -- this lists the actual odds of each pay for the machine, along with 95% confidence intervals on payout for various amounts of play. The casino will then have its slot technicians verify that the machines are paying exactly what they expect. There are legal reasons why they have to do this, but the self-interested incentive for the casino to do this is because they do not usually like to run their machines as tight as the law allows, because players can and will notice and you'll end up losing $20 over the course of 20 minutes when you could have entertained them with a few wins and wound up winning $100 over the course of an evening. A casino is going to be very, very upset if their machines aren't holding PAR due to a defect in the machine, regardless of the direction of error.
Funny story about how sensitive players are to changes in payback: one time, a casino wanted to loosen up their machines, ie. make them pay back more, in order to build up a more loyal following. So they have all their vendors reset the machines with more generous paytables. Their regular players freaked out and started complaining. They could tell that the casino changed the math, but couldn't tell for sure that the math was now more in their favor. They ended up having to go back to tighter math to keep their existing loyal players.
This is a tough spot for the casino. They don't make the machines, and they certainly don't bankroll 7-figure jackpots -- in this case, in sounds like a straight-up glitch that a number that large was ever displayed, but even when it's intentional, they're not the ones on the hook to pay the jackpot when it hits. They buy them from companies like IGT (the Microsoft of the casino gaming world, basically) that are in turn required to submit them for fairly rigorous testing and review from outfits like GLI which ensure regulatory compliance and just that the machine really works as advertised. Still, IGT doesn't have the pissed off customer that thinks they won $11 million when the machine is only holding enough money to fund $1627.82 -- I used to work at a smaller outfit that did bonus features on games. We installed a pretty ambitious project for us, and on our first night running in this brand-new casino, we had an issue happen where due to a ridiculously subtle glitch, our device gave away one luxury car as designed, and then on the very next play, gave away another. Understandably, the casino guys were pretty upset with us, and we ended up paying for the second car.
The article here is really badly written. The spokesperson is quoted as saying that the $11 million was the reset value, but I don't understand how a jackpot is going to be designed to reset from a hit at $1627 to $11 million. Usually, a progressive or mystery jackpot will be "reset" to some amount that a casino will pay -- like $1000 -- and then a portion of every wager will be tossed into a pool of money that's added to that reset value. I'd be interested to know 1) what machine this was, and 2) when did it first display $11 million?
The light accelerates or slows down in the vicinity of the jackpot light. Also, the jackpot bulb resistance could be different. So yes to some extent it's luck but it is winnable.
I win these pretty frequently when I take my family to these places, but when I stop and reflect, even 25 cents (best case scenario) for 100 "tickets" or whatever the reset value of the jackpot is, turns out to be a pretty shitty deal when you see what you can redeem 100 tickets for (and more realistically, I spend at least 10 quarters/tokens for a win, so it's even worse -- but the kids love to see it).
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
When I was younger, the local football club used to sell scratch-cards in the town each weekend. They sold them for years. They were 25p each, with a max possible win of £20. I can remember buying a few from time to time, maybe winning £1 very occasionally.
Then, when we were about 14 somebody found out that a shed near the football club had boxes and boxes full of these unopened (and by then out-of-date) cards, and we took tens of thousands of them. We would spend ages scratching them off, looking for 'winners'. Took so long, that we gave up on that and we learnt just to scratch of the 'void if removed' box and recognise the most common codes... something like 18414 would always mean a loser, 85413 would be a £1 winner etc... we were always looking for a really unusual number that would be the £20 winner.
Any we never found one, not one £20 winner, despite examining tens of thousands of cards over several months.
All games of "chance" and "skill" (like carnival games) are deliberately skewed in favor of the owner, otherwise there would be no profit in owning them. They are meant for entertainment of the customers, not their retirement plan. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.
That said, the owners could be less greedy.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
When you try to throw a ring over a peg at a carnival, there is the assumption that there is a very, very small chance you might win. But as this recent case (involving statistics, forensics, and side-show con artists) shows, in the U.K. at least the odds can't be too far in the houses favour.
Or am I missing something important here?
Most US casinos are operated by native American tribes. Their reservations are their own legal jurisdictions. If you have a problem, your recourse is to sue them in tribal court ... which, of course, is operated by the casino owner. Good luck with those odds. Pity the customer. And how about the employees? The casino employees I know here in Minnesota are keenly aware that their employment rights are severely limited.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
A machine that guarantees a certain percentage of return within a certain time window (probably measured in games played) is not random. If it's not random there's a pattern to how it dispenses winnings. If there's a pattern to it, it should be possible to notice which machines are about to increase their payoff to even the ratio, so it just might be possible to increase your rate of return.
Of course this doesn't guarantee that you can get it over 1. And it especially doesn't guarantee that the casino won't declare you a cheater and ban you, or do something nastier - frankly, these parasites are worse than Al Capone, who at least was providing an actual service to his customers.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Then the onus should be on the casino to ONLY allow functional machines to operate and be played.
If the machine is on the floor, the casino is stating that the machine has been tested and is fit-for-purpose. Otherwise they're essentially saying, these machines might be broken; where the error would result in OUR loss we will void your winnings; where the error might be your loss, that's tough cheese.
That's basically a scam. The law should be changed, or they should basically admit that 'anything goes' and the casino can always weasel out of any situation. (Maybe in big neon letters above the door).
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
They also list the maximum payout.
Anything above that automatically must be a malfunction.
If under that maximum value, there is no other basis for claiming malfunction.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The dealer isn't part of the game. It's the dealers job to run the game. The game it self determines winners and losers. If I'm playing blackjack and I have 25 and the dealer says winner, that is his mistake and I'm not entitled to any winnings. If I hit a blackjack and the dealer says looser, I am entitled to my winnings. If the dealer is not shuffling correctly and I'm winning, that's the casinos problem to fix but that doesn't change my past winnings or losses. If I don't like the way the dealer is shuffling, it's up to me to walk away from the table.
As for the slot machine, if the wheels all came up jackpot, they should get the money, regardless of any errors the machine may have had. If the wheels came up anything else but said jackpot anyway, then no they shouldn't win. It's as simple as that. If casinos want their games run by computers, they need to accept any errors they make. No different when an employee fucks up.
The thing with probability is that the past should not alter the future. If you toss a coin, the chances of it being heads on any given toss are fixed. Even if you have tossed tails a dozen times on a perfectly fair coin, the odds of the next toss being heads are still 50/50.
Gambling on a machine has little to do with probability. Even so, there is a difference between a system that is skewed in the house's favor because the game is unbalanced versus a system that is skewed in the house's favor because it's rigged. An unbalanced system can still be "fair" in that you know that you have a non-zero chance of winning at any given time. In a rigged game, the chance of winning is either 1 or 0. It can never be anything in between. Even if both produce the same number of winners and losers in a day, with the winnings for each being identical, anyone with a sense of fairness is going to prefer the "honestly unbalanced" system over the rigged one.
Why? Because in an unbalanced system, the house is also gambling. It is a contest, no matter how warped. It is possible, as with the coin tossing, for the house to lose more than it expects on a given day. It is also possible for the house to win more. It'll even out in the end. In the rigged system, the winnings are pre-determined. The house is guaranteed to win around X amount from a given machine. It has zero risk.
In this particular case, a valid result according to the rules of the game was rejected because the game wasn't corrupt enough. It would be on-par to someone racing in Formula 1 being disqualified despite a perfect race because the bribed engineer failed to remove the fuel tank. IMHO, if a player plays by the rules and wins by the rules, they are entitled to victory under the rules. It is a bet, with agreed-upon odds, agreed-upon stakes and agreed-upon victory conditions. If a betting office was found doping racehorses or bribing footballers, do you seriously imagine they'd be able to claim they could withhold winnings when the person they tried to make lose won anyway?
Casinos in the US are not betting offices or really "gambling". You can't gamble in a deterministic world, you can merely win or lose when instructed to do so. I doubt this case will force any kind of change to the system, but I'd rather see ACTUAL gambling legalized in the US and game-rigging of any kind banned outright. Mind you, this would mean putting half of Nevada in jail. Not that I can see anything wrong with doing that.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)